Electronic images as an information medium have become an important part of any business environment. Converting documents to electronic images provide the following advantages:

• Reduced storage costs
• Increased productivity
• Increased efficiencies in information retrieval
• An accurate reproduction of the original
• Enhanced security of stored records
• Archived images are now accepted as documentary evidence in legal proceedings both in Canada and The United States

Easy-To-Use Electronic Data Formats

Here are some other considerations:

The use of the data conversion process helps reduce the cost of document distribution, archiving, storage and access. Since thousands of documents are accessed every day, it means that these records are vital to business. It therefore makes sense to make them easily available.

FACTS:

Southport has a number of high speed production scanners capable of converting over 100,000 pages of documents into images in an eight-hour shift.

It costs the average office $20 to file or retrieve a document, $120 to find what's been misfiled and $250 to recreate one.

An average of 3% of documents are lost or misfiled, and have to be recovered at an alarming cost.

It costs about $25,000 to fill a four drawer filing cabinet and over $2,100 per year to maintain it.

Real estate costs for a single filing cabinet are about $110 a year.

Sources: Gartner Group, Coopers & Lybrand, Ernst & Young

Canadian legislation and standards guidelines now give electronic documents the same status as paper documents in both court proceedings and for use in the normal course of business.

• Southport Data Systems has been in the business of converting documents from paper, microfilm or microfiche into easy-to-use electronic formats since 1990.